Field Visit
Date 18 March 1935
Event ID 1125944
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1125944
Fort Charlotte, Lerwick. This fort, standing on a cliff beneath which the town of Lerwick has now extended, was ‘begun to be built in the time of the Dutch War, Anno 1665’ to protect Bressay Sound, ‘for then there was no town here’ (1). The ‘architector’ was ‘one Mr. Milne’ (2), i.e. John Mylne, the King's Master Mason. It was ‘burnt with the town of Lerwick by the Hollanders, August 13th, 1673’ (3), but in 1781 ‘it was repaired under the direction of Captain Fraser, Chief Engineer for Scotland, and called Fort Charlotte’ (4), after the then Queen.
What has survived is an enclosure on Vaubanesque lines, over 2 acres in area and roughly pentagonal in shape, with bastions projecting from each corner. The wall is high and massive, and contains gun-ports looking seawards. There is an entrance on each side except the S.E., where the cliff is vertical. That on the N. has an unmoulded semi-circular arch, behind which there may originally have been a vaulted transe with a gatehouse above. The S. entrance, which projects slightly from the enclosing wall, is a lofty semi-circular archway, roll-moulded, once 9 ft. in width but subsequently reduced by the insertion of a doorway 2 ft. 6t in. wide; above it is the moulded border of an empty panel space. It opens into a transe vaulted with brick, over which there has been a ‘look-out’. The entrances on the W. and S.W. are small semi-circular archways, which may not be original.
Two old guns from Fetlar, traditionally said to be relics of the Spanish Armada, are preserved inside. They are about 4 ft. 9 in. in length and have a bore of 2 ½ in.
RCAHMS 1946, visited 18 March 1935.
O.S.6"map, Shetland, 2nd ed.,(1902).
(1) Brand, Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, &c. (1701), p. 88. (2) Gifford, Hist. Description of the Zetland Islands, p. 6. (3) Sibbald, Description, p. 5. According to Brand, as cited above, there was ‘within the walls a House of Guard, which hath been two Stories high, burnt by the Dutch, after that our Soldiers had left the Fort’. (4) Stat. Acct., iii, p. 420.
